Over Dinner
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Love is not having to eat instant ramen day in an day out.


**Title: **Over Dinner  
**Rating: **PG-13  
**Universe:** Air Gear  
**Theme/Topic:** Heaven  
**Character/Pairing/s:** SoraxRika  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** Spoilers through episode 17 (ish?) of the anime.  
**Word Count:** 947  
**Time:** 47 mins (minor edits)  
**Summary:** Love is not having to eat instant ramen day in an day out.  
**Dedication:** kinoscythe- Haha you're the first person who gets Air Gear het from me. O.o  
**A/N: **Requested on my other lj: hope I do this right. The pairing, as much as I like it, is hard, I think. Definitely less to work with than say, SanoxKazu. XD;;  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

It was silly, but Sora thought that his dinner was trying to tell him something.

He never would have guessed that Rika was the romantic type, that she would pour her heart out into something as mundane as a boxed dinner for him, but there it was anyway, despite his incredulity. Eggs that looked like the sun and the moon, fluffy white rice with dark black seaweed, and little pink chunks of salted, broiled salmon.

"I'll be gone for a few days, but I wanted to make you something anyway. So you wouldn't go back to eating instant ramen everyday," she'd said, and smiled at him so warmly he couldn't tell her that it was fine-- he could take care of himself for a while alone, at least. And it wasn't like the instant ramen would kill him.

But her smile had been too nice, and so he'd simply thanked her with an answering one. Then she'd gone without a backwards glance (it wasn't her style after all) and left him with a stack of boxed lunches in his lap and that odd smile on his face. The dogs had barked at how good it smelled, and Sora supposed that if it saved him a trip to the convenience store, all the better.

But now he was pretty certain there was a message in the food she'd left him, because before, the only things that truly brought him joy were the sun and the moon, the stars, the clouds, the _sky,_ and knowing he could fly in it and touch them all if he wanted to.

Now he felt a different sort of joy, and maybe it was a little bit strange, to find that kind of contentment in something that wasn't the sun or moon or stars above.

He'd been their king, after all. The one closest to heaven. The sky had loved him.

But that was a long time ago, and ever since the day of the accident that very same sky (and as such, everything he ever believed could give him happiness) has been a stranger to him. For a while it felt like no matter how high he reached his hands upwards, all he came back with in the end were two big fistfuls of nothing.

He felt like he'd been abandoned maybe—forsaken. All the things he held most dear growing farther and farther away from him until they were just dots in the distant horizon. Flying off without him.

It was a devastating thing to believe heaven was lost to you— he remembered how it was to look up at all the things he loved so much and not have any wings.

Right now though, right now he felt a spark of that old youth, of that joy he'd once called his own. Like it had never completely left him.

And he felt like his dinner was trying to tell him something.

Leaning forward, he listened to it, studied it close and wondered what Rika was trying to say to him with her food, with her efforts and that warm smile she'd left him with the other day.

And after a little while, he found it, and laughed out loud to himself when did. Loud enough even, that it caused an answering chorus of excited barks amongst his companions.

Eggs that looked like the sun and the moon, a blanket of black seaweed sky—white rice clouds and sesame stars peeking through.

Pink salmon roses and violet-red pickle plums that reminded him of a young woman's blushing cheeks and smiling lips from long ago.

"Ah, so there we are, na?" he murmured to himself when he found it, and thought the food smelled delicious.

He touched the sky she'd made for him—brought back to him after all this time-- with the tips of his fingers. And he discovered that when he looked down at his meal--when he took a deep breath and imagined—he could find everything he'd thought he'd lost so long ago right there at his fingertips. Suns, moons, clouds, stars.

A beautiful girl's brilliant smile.

Maybe he'd been too young back then, he thought. Too young to know that he hadn't really lost anything and that in the end, the things that mattered most would always be at his side no matter what. It took him a long time before, but now he knew that everything he loved had always been right here for him all along.

All he had to do was turn his eyes skyward to realize that the sun was still shining down on him, the clouds were still drifting by slow enough that he could trace their outlines with his fingers as they passed.

And heaven?

Not as lost as he'd first imagined.

Because when looked down into his lap and found the universe there for him in seaweed and rice, in pink fish and red plums and moon-shaped eggs-- all made with great care-- he felt that same joy he'd experienced many years ago, when his fingers could reach high enough to grasp the stars.

Now he was older, wiser, stronger than he'd been before. Less naïve, less melodramatic even. He knew now—had finally figured out-- that all the things he treasured most could never be taken away from him so long as he was alive, living day by day.

And so he smiled to himself and ate his dinner one dreamy rice cloud at a time, one sun, moon, star, heart at a time.

Every bite felt like touching the sky.

And he was beginning to think that heaven was as close to him as a good woman's love.

**END**


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